3 COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES 71 In chapter 2,we described the growth of a new kind of terrorism,and a new terrorist organization—especially from 1988 to 1998,

3

COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES

71

In chapter 2, we described the growth of a new kind of terrorism, and anew terrorist organization—especially from 1988 to 1998, when Usama BinLadin declared war and organized the bombing of two U.S. embassies. In thischapter, we trace the parallel evolution of government efforts to counter ter-rorism by Islamic extremists against the United States.

We mention many personalities in this report.As in any study of the U.S.government, some of the most important characters are institutions.We willintroduce various agencies, and how they adapted to a new kind of terrorism.

3.1 FROM THE OLD TERRORISM TO THE NEW:THE FIRST WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING

At 18 minutes after noon on February 26,1993,a huge bomb went off beneaththe two towers of the World Trade Center.This was not a suicide attack.Theterrorists parked a truck bomb with a timing device on Level B-2 of the under-ground garage, then departed.The ensuing explosion opened a hole seven sto-ries up. Six people died. More than a thousand were injured.An FBI agent atthe scene described the relatively low number of fatalities as a miracle.1

President Bill Clinton ordered his National Security Council to coordinatethe response. Government agencies swung into action to find the culprits.TheCounterterrorist Center located at the CIA combed its files and queriedsources around the world. The National Security Agency (NSA), the hugeDefense Department signals collection agency, ramped up its communicationsintercept network and searched its databases for clues.2 The New York FieldOffice of the FBI took control of the local investigation and, in the end, set apattern for future management of terrorist incidents.

Four features of this episode have significance for the story of 9/11.

Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 71

First, the bombing signaled a new terrorist challenge, one whose rage andmalice had no limit.Ramzi Yousef, the Sunni extremist who planted the bomb,said later that he had hoped to kill 250,000 people.3

Second, the FBI and the Justice Department did excellent work investigat-ing the bombing.Within days, the FBI identified a truck remnant as part of aRyder rental van reported stolen in Jersey City the day before the bombing.4

Mohammed Salameh,who had rented the truck and reported it stolen,keptcalling the rental office to get back his $400 deposit.The FBI arrested him thereon March 4, 1993. In short order, the Bureau had several plotters in custody,including Nidal Ayyad, an engineer who had acquired chemicals for the bomb,and Mahmoud Abouhalima, who had helped mix the chemicals.5

The FBI identified another conspirator,Ahmad Ajaj,who had been arrestedby immigration authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Sep-tember 1992 and charged with document fraud. His traveling companion wasRamzi Yousef, who had also entered with fraudulent documents but claimedpolitical asylum and was admitted. It quickly became clear that Yousef had beena central player in the attack. He had fled to Pakistan immediately after thebombing and would remain at large for nearly two years.6

The arrests of Salameh,Abouhalima, and Ayyad led the FBI to the Farouqmosque in Brooklyn, where a central figure was Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman,an extremist Sunni Muslim cleric who had moved to the United States fromEgypt in 1990. In speeches and writings, the sightless Rahman, often called the“Blind Sheikh,” preached the message of Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones, characteriz-ing the United States as the oppressor of Muslims worldwide and asserting thatit was their religious duty to fight against God’s enemies. An FBI informantlearned of a plan to bomb major New York landmarks, including the Hollandand Lincoln tunnels. Disrupting this “landmarks plot,” the FBI in June 1993arrested Rahman and various confederates.7

As a result of the investigations and arrests, the U.S.Attorney for the South-ern District of New York prosecuted and convicted multiple individuals,including Ajaj, Salameh, Ayyad, Abouhalima, the Blind Sheikh, and RamziYousef, for crimes related to the World Trade Center bombing and other plots.

An unfortunate consequence of this superb investigative and prosecutorialeffort was that it created an impression that the law enforcement system waswell-equipped to cope with terrorism. Neither President Clinton, his princi-pal advisers, the Congress,nor the news media felt prompted,until later, to pressthe question of whether the procedures that put the Blind Sheikh and RamziYousef behind bars would really protect Americans against the new virus ofwhich these individuals were just the first symptoms.8

Third, the successful use of the legal system to address the first World TradeCenter bombing had the side effect of obscuring the need to examine the char-acter and extent of the new threat facing the United States.The trials did notbring the Bin Ladin network to the attention of the public and policymakers.

72 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 72

The FBI assembled, and the U.S. Attorney’s office put forward, some evi-dence showing that the men in the dock were not the only plotters. Materialstaken from Ajaj indicated that the plot or plots were hatched at or near theKhaldan camp, a terrorist training camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.Ajaj had left Texas in April 1992 to go there to learn how to construct bombs.He had met Ramzi Yousef in Pakistan, where they discussed bombing targetsin the United States and assembled a “terrorist kit” that included bomb-mak-ing manuals, operations guidance, videotapes advocating terrorist actionagainst the United States, and false identification documents.9

Yousef was captured in Pakistan following the discovery by police in thePhilippines in January 1995 of the Manila air plot, which envisioned placingbombs on board a dozen trans-Pacific airliners and setting them off simultane-ously.Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—Yousef ’s uncle, then located in Qatar—wasa fellow plotter of Yousef ’s in the Manila air plot and had also wired him somemoney prior to the Trade Center bombing. The U.S. Attorney obtained anindictment against KSM in January 1996, but an official in the government ofQatar probably warned him about it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed evaded cap-ture (and stayed at large to play a central part in the 9/11 attacks).10

The law enforcement process is concerned with proving the guilt of per-sons apprehended and charged. Investigators and prosecutors could not pres-ent all the evidence of possible involvement of individuals other than thosecharged, although they continued to pursue such investigations, planning orhoping for later prosecutions.The process was meant, by its nature, to mark forthe public the events as finished—case solved, justice done. It was not designedto ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come. Nor did it allow foraggregating and analyzing facts to see if they could provide clues to terroristtactics more generally—methods of entry and finance, and mode of operationinside the United States.

Fourth,although the bombing heightened awareness of a new terrorist dan-ger, successful prosecutions contributed to widespread underestimation of thethreat.The government’s attorneys stressed the seriousness of the crimes, andput forward evidence of Yousef ’s technical ingenuity.Yet the public image thatpersisted was not of clever Yousef but of stupid Salameh going back again andagain to reclaim his $400 truck rental deposit.

3.2 ADAPTATION—AND NONADAPTATION—IN THELAW ENFORCEMENT COMMUNITY

Legal processes were the primary method for responding to these early mani-festations of a new type of terrorism.Our overview of U.S.capabilities for deal-ing with it thus begins with the nation’s vast complex of law enforcementagencies.

COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES 73

Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 73

The Justice Department and the FBIAt the federal level, much law enforcement activity is concentrated in theDepartment of Justice. For countering terrorism, the dominant agency underJustice is the Federal Bureau of Investigation.The FBI does not have a generalgrant of authority but instead works under specific statutory authorizations.Most of its work is done in local offices called field offices.There are 56 ofthem, each covering a specified geographic area, and each quite separate fromall others. Prior to 9/11, the special agent in charge was in general free to sethis or her office’s priorities and assign personnel accordingly.11

The office’s priorities were driven by two primary concerns.First,perform-ance in the Bureau was generally measured against statistics such as numbersof arrests, indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. Counterterrorism andcounterintelligence work, often involving lengthy intelligence investigationsthat might never have positive or quantifiable results, was not career-enhanc-ing. Most agents who reached management ranks had little counterterrorismexperience. Second,priorities were driven at the local level by the field offices,whose concerns centered on traditional crimes such as white-collar offensesand those pertaining to drugs and gangs. Individual field offices made choicesto serve local priorities, not national priorities.12

The Bureau also operates under an “office of origin”system.To avoid dupli-cation and possible conflicts, the FBI designates a single office to be in chargeof an entire investigation. Because the New York Field Office indicted BinLadin prior to the East Africa bombings, it became the office of origin for allBin Ladin cases, including the East Africa bombings and later the attack on theUSS Cole.Most of the FBI’s institutional knowledge on Bin Ladin and al Qaedaresided there.This office worked closely with the U.S.Attorney for the South-ern District of New York to identify, arrest, prosecute, and convict many of theperpetrators of the attacks and plots.Field offices other than the specified officeof origin were often reluctant to spend much energy on matters over whichthey had no control and for which they received no credit.13

The FBI’s domestic intelligence gathering dates from the 1930s.With WorldWar II looming,President Franklin D.Roosevelt ordered FBI Director J.EdgarHoover to investigate foreign and foreign-inspired subversion—Communist,Nazi, and Japanese.Hoover added investigation of possible espionage, sabotage,or subversion to the duties of field offices. After the war, foreign intelligenceduties were assigned to the newly established Central Intelligence Agency.Hoover jealously guarded the FBI’s domestic portfolio against all rivals.Hoover felt he was accountable only to the president, and the FBI’s domesticintelligence activities kept growing. In the 1960s, the FBI was receiving signif-icant assistance within the United States from the CIA and from Army Intel-ligence.The legal basis for some of this assistance was dubious.

Decades of encouragement to perform as a domestic intelligence agencyabruptly ended in the 1970s.Two years after Hoover’s death in 1972, congres-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 74

sional and news media investigations of the Watergate scandals of the Nixonadministration expanded into general investigations of foreign and domesticintelligence by the Church and Pike committees.14 They disclosed domesticintelligence efforts,which included a covert action program that operated from1956 to 1971 against domestic organizations and, eventually, domestic dissi-dents.The FBI had spied on a wide range of political figures, especially indi-viduals whom Hoover wanted to discredit (notably the Reverend MartinLuther King, Jr.), and had authorized unlawful wiretaps and surveillance.Theshock registered in public opinion polls, where the percentage of Americansdeclaring a “highly favorable” view of the FBI dropped from 84 percent to 37percent.The FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division was dissolved.15

In 1976,Attorney General Edward Levi adopted domestic security guide-lines to regulate intelligence collection in the United States and to deflect callsfor even stronger regulation. In 1983,Attorney General William French Smithrevised the Levi guidelines to encourage closer investigation of potential ter-rorism. He also loosened the rules governing authorization for investigationsand their duration. Still, his guidelines, like Levi’s, took account of the realitythat suspicion of “terrorism,” like suspicion of “subversion,”could lead to mak-ing individuals targets for investigation more because of their beliefs thanbecause of their acts. Smith’s guidelines also took account of the reality thatpotential terrorists were often members of extremist religious organizations andthat investigation of terrorism could cross the line separating state andchurch.16

In 1986, Congress authorized the FBI to investigate terrorist attacks againstAmericans that occur outside the United States. Three years later, it addedauthority for the FBI to make arrests abroad without consent from the hostcountry. Meanwhile, a task force headed by Vice President George H.W. Bushhad endorsed a concept already urged by Director of Central IntelligenceWilliam Casey—a Counterterrorist Center,where the FBI, the CIA,and otherorganizations could work together on international terrorism.While it was dis-tinctly a CIA entity, the FBI detailed officials to work at the Center andobtained leads that helped in the capture of persons wanted for trial in theUnited States.

The strengths that the FBI brought to counterterrorism were nowhere morebrilliantly on display than in the case of Pan American Flight 103, bound fromLondon to New York, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December1988, killing 270 people. Initial evidence pointed to the government of Syriaand, later, Iran.The Counterterrorist Center reserved judgment on the perpe-trators of the attack. Meanwhile, FBI technicians, working with U.K. securityservices, gathered and analyzed the widely scattered fragments of the airliner.In 1991,with the help of the Counterterrorist Center, they identified one smallfragment as part of a timing device—to the technicians, as distinctive as DNA.It was a Libyan device.Together with other evidence, the FBI put together a


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 75

case pointing conclusively to the Libyan government. Eventually Libyaacknowledged its responsibility.17 Pan Am 103 became a cautionary taleagainst rushing to judgment in attributing responsibility for a terrorist act. Italso showed again how—given a case to solve—the FBI remained capable ofextraordinary investigative success.

FBI Organization and PrioritiesIn 1993, President Clinton chose Louis Freeh as the Director of the Bureau.Freeh, who would remain Director until June 2001, believed that the FBI’swork should be done primarily by the field offices.To emphasize this view hecut headquarters staff and decentralized operations.The special agents in chargegained power, influence, and independence.18

Freeh recognized terrorism as a major threat. He increased the number oflegal attaché offices abroad, focusing in particular on the Middle East. He alsourged agents not to wait for terrorist acts to occur before taking action. In hisfirst budget request to Congress after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,he stated that “merely solving this type of crime is not enough; it is equallyimportant that the FBI thwart terrorism before such acts can be perpetrated.”Within headquarters,he created a Counterterrorism Division that would com-plement the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA and arranged for exchangesof senior FBI and CIA counterterrorism officials. He pressed for more coop-eration between legal attachés and CIA stations abroad.19

Freeh’s efforts did not, however, translate into a significant shift of resourcesto counterterrorism. FBI, Justice, and Office of Management and Budget offi-cials said that FBI leadership seemed unwilling to shift resources to terrorismfrom other areas such as violent crime and drug enforcement; other FBI offi-cials blamed Congress and the OMB for a lack of political will and failure tounderstand the FBI’s counterterrorism resource needs. In addition, Freeh didnot impose his views on the field offices.With a few notable exceptions, thefield offices did not apply significant resources to terrorism and often repro-grammed funds for other priorities.20

In 1998, the FBI issued a five-year strategic plan led by its deputy director,Robert “Bear” Bryant. For the first time, the FBI designated national and eco-nomic security, including counterterrorism,as its top priority.Dale Watson,whowould later become the head of the new Counterterrorism Division, said thatafter the East Africa bombings,“the light came on” that cultural change had tooccur within the FBI.The plan mandated a stronger intelligence collection effort.It called for a nationwide automated system to facilitate information collection,analysis,and dissemination.It envisioned the creation of a professional intelligencecadre of experienced and trained agents and analysts.If successfully implemented,this would have been a major step toward addressing terrorism systematically,rather than as individual unrelated cases. But the plan did not succeed.21

First, the plan did not obtain the necessary human resources.Despite des-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 76

ignating “national and economic security” as its top priority in 1998, theFBI did not shift human resources accordingly.Although the FBI’s counter-terrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, FBI counterterrorismspending remained fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001. In2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement asto counterterrorism.22

Second, the new division intended to strengthen the FBI’s strategic analy-sis capability faltered. It received insufficient resources and faced resistance fromsenior managers in the FBI’s operational divisions.The new division was sup-posed to identify trends in terrorist activity, determine what the FBI did notknow,and ultimately drive collection efforts.However, the FBI had little appre-ciation for the role of analysis.Analysts continued to be used primarily in a tac-tical fashion—providing support for existing cases.Compounding the problemwas the FBI’s tradition of hiring analysts from within instead of recruiting indi-viduals with the relevant educational background and expertise.23

Moreover, analysts had difficulty getting access to the FBI and intelligencecommunity information they were expected to analyze.The poor state of theFBI’s information systems meant that such access depended in large part on ananalyst’s personal relationships with individuals in the operational units orsquads where the information resided. For all of these reasons, prior to 9/11relatively few strategic analytic reports about counterterrorism had been com-pleted. Indeed, the FBI had never completed an assessment of the overall ter-rorist threat to the U.S. homeland.24

Third, the FBI did not have an effective intelligence collection effort. Col-lection of intelligence from human sources was limited, and agents were inad-equately trained. Only three days of a 16-week agents’ course were devoted tocounterintelligence and counterterrorism, and most subsequent training wasreceived on the job.The FBI did not have an adequate mechanism for validat-ing source reporting, nor did it have a system for adequately tracking and shar-ing source reporting, either internally or externally.The FBI did not dedicatesufficient resources to the surveillance and translation needs of counter-terrorism agents. It lacked sufficient translators proficient in Arabic and otherkey languages, resulting in a significant backlog of untranslated intercepts.25

Finally, the FBI’s information systems were woefully inadequate. The FBIlacked the ability to know what it knew: there was no effective mechanism forcapturing or sharing its institutional knowledge.FBI agents did create records ofinterviews and other investigative efforts, but there were no reports officers tocondense the information into meaningful intelligence that could be retrievedand disseminated.26

In 1999, the FBI created separate Counterterrorism and Counterintelli-gence divisions.Dale Watson, the first head of the new Counterterrorism Divi-sion, recognized the urgent need to increase the FBI’s counterterrorismcapability. His plan, called MAXCAP 05, was unveiled in 2000: it set the goal


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 77

of bringing the Bureau to its “maximum feasible capacity” in counterterror-ism by 2005. Field executives told Watson that they did not have the analysts,linguists,or technically trained experts to carry out the strategy. In a report pro-vided to Director Robert Mueller in September 2001, one year after Watsonpresented his plan to field executives, almost every FBI field office was assessedto be operating below “maximum capacity.”The report stated that “the goal to‘prevent terrorism’ requires a dramatic shift in emphasis from a reactive capa-bility to highly functioning intelligence capability which provides not onlyleads and operational support, but clear strategic analysis and direction.”27

Legal Constraints on the FBI and “the Wall”The FBI had different tools for law enforcement and intelligence.28 For crim-inal matters, it could apply for and use traditional criminal warrants. For intel-ligence matters involving international terrorism, however, the rules weredifferent. For many years the attorney general could authorize surveillance offoreign powers and agents of foreign powers without any court review, but in1978 Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.29This law reg-ulated intelligence collection directed at foreign powers and agents of foreignpowers in the United States. In addition to requiring court review of proposedsurveillance (and later, physical searches), the 1978 act was interpreted by thecourts to require that a search be approved only if its “primary purpose” wasto obtain foreign intelligence information. In other words, the authorities ofthe FISA law could not be used to circumvent traditional criminal warrantrequirements.The Justice Department interpreted these rulings as saying thatcriminal prosecutors could be briefed on FISA information but could notdirect or control its collection.30

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Justice prosecutors had informalarrangements for obtaining information gathered in the FISA process, theunderstanding being that they would not improperly exploit that process fortheir criminal cases. Whether the FBI shared with prosecutors informationpertinent to possible criminal investigations was left solely to the judgment ofthe FBI.31

But the prosecution of Aldrich Ames for espionage in 1994 revived con-cerns about the prosecutors’ role in intelligence investigations.The Departmentof Justice’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) is responsible forreviewing and presenting all FISA applications to the FISA Court. It worriedthat because of the numerous prior consultations between FBI agents and pros-ecutors, the judge might rule that the FISA warrants had been misused. If thathad happened,Ames might have escaped conviction.Richard Scruggs, the act-ing head of OIPR,complained to Attorney General Janet Reno about the lackof information-sharing controls.On his own,he began imposing information-sharing procedures for FISA material.The Office of Intelligence Policy andReview became the gatekeeper for the flow of FISA information to criminalprosecutors.32


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 78

In July 1995, Attorney General Reno issued formal procedures aimed atmanaging information sharing between Justice Department prosecutors andthe FBI.They were developed in a working group led by the Justice Depart-ment’s Executive Office of National Security, overseen by Deputy AttorneyGeneral Jamie Gorelick.33 These procedures—while requiring the sharing ofintelligence information with prosecutors—regulated the manner in whichsuch information could be shared from the intelligence side of the house tothe criminal side.

These procedures were almost immediately misunderstood and misapplied.As a result, there was far less information sharing and coordination betweenthe FBI and the Criminal Division in practice than was allowed under thedepartment’s procedures. Over time the procedures came to be referred to as“the wall.” The term “the wall” is misleading, however, because several factorsled to a series of barriers to information sharing that developed.34

The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review became the sole gatekeeperfor passing information to the Criminal Division.Though Attorney GeneralReno’s procedures did not include such a provision, the Office assumed therole anyway, arguing that its position reflected the concerns of Judge RoyceLamberth, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.TheOffice threatened that if it could not regulate the flow of information to crim-inal prosecutors, it would no longer present the FBI’s warrant requests to theFISA Court.The information flow withered.35

The 1995 procedures dealt only with sharing between agents and criminalprosecutors, not between two kinds of FBI agents, those working on intelli-gence matters and those working on criminal matters. But pressure from theOffice of Intelligence Policy Review,FBI leadership, and the FISA Court builtbarriers between agents—even agents serving on the same squads.FBI DeputyDirector Bryant reinforced the Office’s caution by informing agents that toomuch information sharing could be a career stopper.Agents in the field beganto believe—incorrectly—that no FISA information could be shared withagents working on criminal investigations.36

This perception evolved into the still more exaggerated belief that the FBIcould not share any intelligence information with criminal investigators, evenif no FISA procedures had been used. Thus, relevant information from theNational Security Agency and the CIA often failed to make its way to crimi-nal investigators. Separate reviews in 1999, 2000, and 2001 concluded inde-pendently that information sharing was not occurring, and that the intent ofthe 1995 procedures was ignored routinely.37 We will describe some of theunfortunate consequences of these accumulated institutional beliefs and prac-tices in chapter 8.

There were other legal limitations.Both prosecutors and FBI agents arguedthat they were barred by court rules from sharing grand jury information,eventhough the prohibition applied only to that small fraction that had been pre-sented to a grand jury, and even that prohibition had exceptions. But as inter-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 79

preted by FBI field offices, this prohibition could conceivably apply to muchof the information unearthed in an investigation.There were also restrictions,arising from executive order, on the commingling of domestic informationwith foreign intelligence. Finally the NSA began putting caveats on its BinLadin–related reports that required prior approval before sharing their contentswith criminal investigators and prosecutors. These developments furtherblocked the arteries of information sharing.38

Other Law Enforcement AgenciesThe Justice Department is much more than the FBI. It also has a U.S.MarshalsService, almost 4,000 strong on 9/11 and especially expert in tracking fugi-tives,with much local police knowledge.The department’s Drug EnforcementAdministration had, as of 2001, more than 4,500 agents.39 There were a num-ber of occasions when DEA agents were able to introduce sources to the FBIor CIA for counterterrorism use.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), with its 9,000 BorderPatrol agents, 4,500 inspectors, and 2,000 immigration special agents, had per-haps the greatest potential to develop an expanded role in counterterrorism.However, the INS was focused on the formidable challenges posed by illegalentry over the southwest border, criminal aliens, and a growing backlog in theapplications for naturalizing immigrants.The White House, the Justice Depart-ment, and above all the Congress reinforced these concerns. In addition, whenDoris Meissner became INS Commissioner in 1993, she found an agency seri-ously hampered by outdated technology and insufficient human resources.Bor-der Patrol agents were still using manual typewriters; inspectors at ports of entrywere using a paper watchlist; the asylum and other benefits systems did noteffectively deter fraudulent applicants.40

Commissioner Meissner responded in 1993 to the World Trade Centerbombing by providing seed money to the State Department’s Consular AffairsBureau to automate its terrorist watchlist, used by consular officers and borderinspectors.The INS assigned an individual in a new “lookout” unit to workwith the State Department in watchlisting suspected terrorists and with theintelligence community and the FBI in determining how to deal with themwhen they appeared at ports of entry.By 1998,97 suspected terrorists had beendenied admission at U.S. ports of entry because of the watchlist.41

How to conduct deportation cases against aliens who were suspected ter-rorists caused significant debate.The INS had immigration law expertise andauthority to bring the cases, but the FBI possessed the classified informationsometimes needed as evidence, and information-sharing conflicts resulted.New laws in 1996 authorized the use of classified evidence in removal hear-ings, but the INS removed only a handful of the aliens with links to terroristactivity (none identified as associated with al Qaeda) using classified evidence.42

Midlevel INS employees proposed comprehensive counterterrorism pro-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 80

posals to management in 1986, 1995, and 1997. No action was taken on them.In 1997, a National Security Unit was set up to handle alerts, track potentialterrorist cases for possible immigration enforcement action, and work with therest of the Justice Department. It focused on the FBI’s priorities of Hezbollahand Hamas, and began to examine how immigration laws could be brought tobear on terrorism. For instance, it sought unsuccessfully to require that CIAsecurity checks be completed before naturalization applications wereapproved.43 Policy questions, such as whether resident alien status should berevoked upon the person’s conviction of a terrorist crime, were not addressed.

Congress,with the support of the Clinton administration,doubled the num-ber of Border Patrol agents required along the border with Mexico to oneagent every quarter mile by 1999. It rejected efforts to bring additionalresources to bear in the north.The border with Canada had one agent for every13.25 miles.Despite examples of terrorists entering from Canada, awareness ofterrorist activity in Canada and its more lenient immigration laws, and aninspector general’s report recommending that the Border Patrol develop anorthern border strategy, the only positive step was that the number of BorderPatrol agents was not cut any further.44

Inspectors at the ports of entry were not asked to focus on terrorists. Inspec-tors told us they were not even aware that when they checked the names ofincoming passengers against the automated watchlist, they were checking inpart for terrorists. In general, border inspectors also did not have the informa-tion they needed to make fact-based determinations of admissibility.The INSinitiated but failed to bring to completion two efforts that would have pro-vided inspectors with information relevant to counterterrorism—a proposedsystem to track foreign student visa compliance and a program to establish a wayof tracking travelers’ entry to and exit from the United States.45

In 1996, a new law enabled the INS to enter into agreements with state andlocal law enforcement agencies through which the INS provided training andthe local agencies exercised immigration enforcement authority. Terroristwatchlists were not available to them. Mayors in cities with large immigrantpopulations sometimes imposed limits on city employee cooperation with fed-eral immigration agents.A large population lives outside the legal framework.Fraudulent documents could be easily obtained. Congress kept the number ofINS agents static in the face of the overwhelming problem.46

The chief vehicle for INS and for state and local participation in lawenforcement was the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), first tried out in NewYork City in 1980 in response to a spate of incidents involving domestic ter-rorist organizations.This task force was managed by the New York Field Officeof the FBI, and its existence provided an opportunity to exchange informationand,as happened after the first World Trade Center bombing, to enlist local offi-cers, as well as other agency representatives, as partners in the FBI investiga-tion.The FBI expanded the number of JTTFs throughout the 1990s, and by


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 81

9/11 there were 34.While useful, the JTTFs had limitations.They set priori-ties in accordance with regional and field office concerns, and most were notfully staffed. Many state and local entities believed they had little to gain fromhaving a full-time representative on a JTTF.47

Other federal law enforcement resources, also not seriously enlisted forcounterterrorism, were to be found in the Treasury Department.

Treasury housed the Secret Service, the Customs Service, and the Bureauof Alcohol,Tobacco, and Firearms. Given the Secret Service’s mission to pro-tect the president and other high officials, its agents did become involved withthose of the FBI whenever terrorist assassination plots were rumored.

The Customs Service deployed agents at all points of entry into theUnited States. Its agents worked alongside INS agents, and the two groupssometimes cooperated. In the winter of 1999–2000, as will be detailed inchapter 6, questioning by an especially alert Customs inspector led to thearrest of an al Qaeda terrorist whose apparent mission was to bomb LosAngeles International Airport.

The Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco, and Firearms was used on occasion by theFBI as a resource.The ATF’s laboratories and analysis were critical to the inves-tigation of the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the April1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.48

Before 9/11,with the exception of one portion of the FBI, very little of thesprawling U.S. law enforcement community was engaged in countering ter-rorism. Moreover, law enforcement could be effective only after specific indi-viduals were identified, a plot had formed, or an attack had already occurred.Responsible individuals had to be located, apprehended, and transported backto a U.S. court for prosecution.As FBI agents emphasized to us, the FBI andthe Justice Department do not have cruise missiles.They declare war by indict-ing someone.They took on the lead role in addressing terrorism because theywere asked to do so.49

3.3 . . .AND IN THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within the Department of Trans-portation had been vested by Congress with the sometimes conflicting man-date of regulating the safety and security of U.S. civil aviation while alsopromoting the civil aviation industry.The FAA had a security mission to pro-tect the users of commercial air transportation against terrorism and othercriminal acts. In the years before 9/11, the FAA perceived sabotage as a greaterthreat to aviation than hijacking. First, no domestic hijacking had occurred ina decade. Second, the commercial aviation system was perceived as more vul-nerable to explosives than to weapons such as firearms. Finally, explosives were


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 82

perceived as deadlier than hijacking and therefore of greater consequence. In1996, a presidential commission on aviation safety and security chaired by VicePresident Al Gore reinforced the prevailing concern about sabotage and explo-sives on aircraft.The Gore Commission also flagged, as a new danger, the pos-sibility of attack by surface-to-air missiles. Its 1997 final report did not discussthe possibility of suicide hijackings.50

The FAA set and enforced aviation security rules, which airlines and air-ports were required to implement.The rules were supposed to produce a “lay-ered” system of defense.This meant that the failure of any one layer of securitywould not be fatal, because additional layers would provide backup security.But each layer relevant to hijackings—intelligence, passenger prescreening,checkpoint screening, and onboard security—was seriously flawed prior to9/11.Taken together, they did not stop any of the 9/11 hijackers from gettingon board four different aircraft at three different airports.51

The FAA’s policy was to use intelligence to identify both specific plots andgeneral threats to civil aviation security, so that the agency could develop anddeploy appropriate countermeasures. The FAA’s 40-person intelligence unitwas supposed to receive a broad range of intelligence data from the FBI, CIA,and other agencies so that it could make assessments about the threat to avia-tion. But the large volume of data contained little pertaining to the presenceand activities of terrorists in the United States. For example, information onthe FBI’s effort in 1998 to assess the potential use of flight training by terror-ists and the Phoenix electronic communication of 2001 warning of radicalMiddle Easterners attending flight school were not passed to FAA headquar-ters. Several top FAA intelligence officials called the domestic threat picture aserious blind spot.52

Moreover, the FAA’s intelligence unit did not receive much attention fromthe agency’s leadership.Neither Administrator Jane Garvey nor her deputy rou-tinely reviewed daily intelligence,and what they did see was screened for them.She was unaware of a great amount of hijacking threat information from herown intelligence unit, which, in turn, was not deeply involved in the agency’spolicymaking process.Historically,decisive security action took place only aftera disaster had occurred or a specific plot had been discovered.53

The next aviation security layer was passenger prescreening. The FAAdirected air carriers not to fly individuals known to pose a “direct” threat tocivil aviation. But as of 9/11, the FAA’s “no-fly” list contained the names ofjust 12 terrorist suspects (including 9/11 mastermind Khalid SheikhMohammed), even though government watchlists contained the names ofmany thousands of known and suspected terrorists.This astonishing mismatchexisted despite the Gore Commission’s having called on the FBI and CIA fouryears earlier to provide terrorist watchlists to improve prescreening.The long-time chief of the FAA’s civil aviation security division testified that he was noteven aware of the State Department’s TIPOFF list of known and suspected ter-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 83

rorists (some 60,000 before 9/11) until he heard it mentioned during theCommission’s January 26, 2004, public hearing.The FAA had access to someTIPOFF data, but apparently found it too difficult to use.54

The second part of prescreening called on the air carriers to implement anFAA-approved computerized algorithm (known as CAPPS, for ComputerAssisted Passenger Prescreening System) designed to identify passengers whoseprofile suggested they might pose more than a minimal risk to aircraft.Although the algorithm included hijacker profile data, at that time only pas-sengers checking bags were eligible to be selected by CAPPS for additionalscrutiny. Selection entailed only having one’s checked baggage screened forexplosives or held off the airplane until one had boarded. Primarily because ofconcern regarding potential discrimination and the impact on passengerthroughput, “selectees” were no longer required to undergo extraordinaryscreening of their carry-on baggage as had been the case before the system wascomputerized in 1997.55 This policy change also reflected the perception thatnonsuicide sabotage was the primary threat to civil aviation.

Checkpoint screening was considered the most important and obvious layerof security. Walk-through metal detectors and X-ray machines operated bytrained screeners were employed to stop prohibited items. Numerous govern-ment reports indicated that checkpoints performed poorly, often failing todetect even obvious FAA test items. Many deadly and dangerous items did notset off metal detectors, or were hard to distinguish in an X-ray machine frominnocent everyday items.56

While FAA rules did not expressly prohibit knives with blades under 4inches long, the airlines’ checkpoint operations guide (which was developed incooperation with the FAA), explicitly permitted them.The FAA’s basis for thispolicy was (1) the agency did not consider such items to be menacing, (2) mostlocal laws did not prohibit individuals from carrying such knives, and (3) suchknives would have been difficult to detect unless the sensitivity of metal detec-tors had been greatly increased. A proposal to ban knives altogether in 1993had been rejected because small cutting implements were difficult to detect andthe number of innocent “alarms” would have increased significantly, exacer-bating congestion problems at checkpoints.57

Several years prior to 9/11, an FAA requirement for screeners to conduct“continuous” and “random” hand searches of carry-on luggage at checkpointshad been replaced by explosive trace detection or had simply become ignoredby the air carriers. Therefore, secondary screening of individuals and theircarry-on bags to identify weapons (other than bombs) was nonexistent, exceptfor passengers who triggered the metal detectors.Even when small knives weredetected by secondary screening, they were usually returned to the traveler.Reportedly, the 9/11 hijackers were instructed to use items that would beundetectable by airport checkpoints.58

In the pre-9/11 security system, the air carriers played a major role.As the


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 84

Inspector General of the Department of Transportation told us, there were greatpressures from the air carriers to control security costs and to “limit the impactof security requirements on aviation operations, so that the industry could con-centrate on its primary mission of moving passengers and aircraft. . . . [T]hosecounterpressures in turn manifested themselves as significant weaknesses insecurity.”A longtime FAA security official described the air carriers’ approachto security regulation as “decry, deny and delay” and told us that while “the aircarriers had seen the enlightened hand of self-interest with respect to safety,they hadn’t seen it in the security arena.”59

The final layer, security on board commercial aircraft, was not designed tocounter suicide hijackings.The FAA-approved “Common Strategy” had beenelaborated over decades of experience with scores of hijackings, beginning inthe 1960s. It taught flight crews that the best way to deal with hijackers was toaccommodate their demands, get the plane to land safely, and then let lawenforcement or the military handle the situation. According to the FAA, therecord had shown that the longer a hijacking persisted, the more likely it wasto end peacefully.The strategy operated on the fundamental assumption thathijackers issue negotiable demands (most often for asylum or the release of pris-oners) and that, as one FAA official put it,“suicide wasn’t in the game plan” ofhijackers. FAA training material provided no guidance for flight crews shouldviolence occur.60

This prevailing Common Strategy of cooperation and nonconfrontationmeant that even a hardened cockpit door would have made little difference ina hijacking.As the chairman of the Security Committee of the Air Line PilotsAssociation observed when proposals were made in early 2001 to install rein-forced cockpit doors in commercial aircraft,“Even if you make a vault out ofthe door, if they have a noose around my flight attendant’s neck, I’m going toopen the door.” Prior to 9/11, FAA regulations mandated that cockpit doorspermit ready access into and out of the cockpit in the event of an emergency.Even so, rules implemented in the 1960s required air crews to keep the cock-pit door closed and locked in flight.This requirement was not always observedor vigorously enforced.61

As for law enforcement, there were only 33 armed and trained federal airmarshals as of 9/11.They were not deployed on U.S. domestic flights, exceptwhen in transit to provide security on international departures. This policyreflected the FAA’s view that domestic hijacking was in check—a view heldconfidently as no terrorist had hijacked a U.S. commercial aircraft anywhere inthe world since 1986.62

In the absence of any recent aviation security incident and without “spe-cific and credible” evidence of a plot directed at civil aviation, the FAA’s lead-ership focused elsewhere, including on operational concerns and theever-present issue of safety. FAA Administrator Garvey recalled that “every dayin 2001 was like the day before Thanksgiving.” Heeding calls for improved air


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 85

service, Congress concentrated its efforts on a “passenger bill of rights,” toimprove capacity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction in the aviation system.There was no focus on terrorism.63

3.4 . . .AND IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

The National Security Act of 1947 created the position of Director of CentralIntelligence (DCI). Independent from the departments of Defense, State, Justice,and other policy departments,the DCI heads the U.S.intelligence community andprovides intelligence to federal entities.

The sole element of the intelligence community independent from a cab-inet agency is the CIA.As an independent agency, it collects, analyzes, and dis-seminates intelligence from all sources.The CIA’s number one customer is thepresident of the United States, who also has the authority to direct it to con-duct covert operations.64 Although covert actions represent a very small frac-tion of the Agency’s entire budget, these operations have at times beencontroversial and over time have dominated the public’s perception of the CIA.

The DCI is confirmed by the Senate but is not technically a member of thepresident’s cabinet.The director’s power under federal law over the loose, con-federated “intelligence community” is limited.65 He or she states the commu-nity’s priorities and coordinates development of intelligence agency budgetrequests for submission to Congress.

This responsibility gives many the false impression that the DCI has lineauthority over the heads of these agencies and has the power to shift resourceswithin these budgets as the need arises. Neither is true. In fact, the DCI’s realauthority has been directly proportional to his personal closeness to the presi-dent, which has waxed and waned over the years, and to others in government,especially the secretary of defense.

Intelligence agencies under the Department of Defense account forapproximately 80 percent of all U.S. spending for intelligence, including somethat supports a national customer base and some that supports specific DefenseDepartment or military service needs.66 As they are housed in the DefenseDepartment, these agencies are keenly attentive to the military’s strategic andtactical requirements.

One of the intelligence agencies in Defense with a national customer baseis the National Security Agency, which intercepts and analyzes foreign com-munications and breaks codes.The NSA also creates codes and ciphers to pro-tect government information. Another is the recently renamed NationalGeospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which provides and analyzes imageryand produces a wide array of products, including maps, navigation tools, andsurveillance intelligence. A third such agency in Defense is the NationalReconnaissance Office. It develops, procures, launches, and maintains in orbit


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 86

information-gathering satellites that serve other government agencies.The Defense Intelligence Agency supports the secretary of defense, Joint

Chiefs of Staff, and military field commanders. It does some collection throughhuman sources as well as some technical intelligence collection. The Army,Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have their own intelligence componentsthat collect information, help them decide what weapons to acquire, and servethe tactical intelligence needs of their respective services.

In addition to those from the Department of Defense,other elements in theintelligence community include the national security parts of the FBI; theBureau of Intelligence and Research in the State Department; the intelligencecomponent of the Treasury Department; the Energy Department’s Office ofIntelligence and Counterintelligence, the former of which, through leverag-ing the expertise of the national laboratory system, has special competence innuclear weapons; the Office of Intelligence of the Coast Guard; and, today, theDirectorate of Intelligence Analysis and Infrastructure Protection in theDepartment of Homeland Security.

The National Security AgencyThe National Security Agency’s intercepts of terrorist communications oftenset off alarms elsewhere in the government. Often, too, its intercepts are con-clusive elements in the analyst’s jigsaw puzzle. NSA engineers build technicalsystems to break ciphers and to make sense of today’s complex signals environ-ment. Its analysts listen to conversations between foreigners not meant forthem.They also perform “traffic analysis”—studying technical communicationssystems and codes as well as foreign organizational structures, including thoseof terrorist organizations.

Cold War adversaries used very hierarchical, familiar, and predictable mili-tary command and control methods.With globalization and the telecommu-nications revolution,and with loosely affiliated but networked adversaries usingcommercial devices and encryption, the technical impediments to signals col-lection grew at a geometric rate. At the same time, the end of the Cold Warand the resultant cuts in national security funding forced intelligence agenciesto cut systems and seek economies of scale.Modern adversaries are skilled usersof communications technologies.The NSA’s challenges, and its opportunities,increased exponentially in “volume, variety, and velocity.”67

The law requires the NSA to not deliberately collect data on U.S. citizensor on persons in the United States without a warrant based on foreign intelli-gence requirements. Also, the NSA was supposed to let the FBI know of anyindication of crime, espionage, or “terrorist enterprise” so that the FBI couldobtain the appropriate warrant. Later in this story, we will learn that while theNSA had the technical capability to report on communications with suspectedterrorist facilities in the Middle East, the NSA did not seek FISA Court war-rants to collect communications between individuals in the United States and


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 87

foreign countries, because it believed that this was an FBI role. It also did notwant to be viewed as targeting persons in the United States and possibly vio-lating laws that governed NSA’s collection of foreign intelligence.68

An almost obsessive protection of sources and methods by the NSA, and itsfocus on foreign intelligence, and its avoidance of anything domestic would, aswill be seen, be important elements in the story of 9/11.

Technology as an Intelligence Asset and LiabilityThe application of newly developed scientific technology to the mission of U.S.war fighters and national security decisionmakers is one of the great success sto-ries of the twentieth century. It did not happen by accident. Recent wars havebeen waged and won decisively by brave men and women using advanced tech-nology that was developed, authorized, and paid for by conscientious and dili-gent executive and legislative branch leaders many years earlier.

The challenge of technology, however, is a daunting one. It is expensive,sometimes fails, and often can create problems as well as solve them. Some ofthe advanced technologies that gave us insight into the closed-off territoriesof the Soviet Union during the Cold War are of limited use in identifying andtracking individual terrorists.

Terrorists, in turn,have benefited from this same rapid development of com-munication technologies.They simply could buy off the shelf and harvest theproducts of a $3 trillion a year telecommunications industry.They could acquirewithout great expense communication devices that were varied, global,instantaneous, complex, and encrypted.

The emergence of the World Wide Web has given terrorists a much easiermeans of acquiring information and exercising command and control overtheir operations.The operational leader of the 9/11 conspiracy,Mohamed Atta,went online from Hamburg, Germany, to research U.S. flight schools.Targetsof intelligence collection have become more sophisticated.These changes havemade surveillance and threat warning more difficult.

Despite the problems that technology creates,Americans’ love affair with itleads them to also regard it as the solution. But technology produces its bestresults when an organization has the doctrine, structure, and incentives toexploit it. For example, even the best information technology will not improveinformation sharing so long as the intelligence agencies’ personnel and secu-rity systems reward protecting information rather than disseminating it.

The CIAThe CIA is a descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),which Pres-ident Roosevelt created early in World War II after having first thought the FBImight take that role.The father of the OSS was William J.“Wild Bill” Dono-van, a Wall Street lawyer. He recruited into the OSS others like himself—welltraveled, well connected, well-to-do professional men and women.69


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 88

An innovation of Donovan’s,whose legacy remains part of U.S. intelligencetoday, was the establishment of a Research and Analysis Branch.There largenumbers of scholars from U.S.universities pored over accounts from spies,com-munications intercepted by the armed forces, transcripts of radio broadcasts,and publications of all types, and prepared reports on economic, political, andsocial conditions in foreign theaters of operation.

At the end of World War II, to Donovan’s disappointment, President HarryTruman dissolved the Office of Strategic Services. Four months later, the Pres-ident directed that “all Federal foreign intelligence activities be planned,devel-oped and coordinated so as to assure the most effective accomplishment of theintelligence mission related to the national security,” under a National Intelli-gence Authority consisting of the secretaries of State,War, and the Navy, and apersonal representative of the president.This body was to be assisted by a Cen-tral Intelligence Group, made up of persons detailed from the departments ofeach of the members and headed by a Director of Central Intelligence.70

Subsequently, President Truman agreed to the National Security Act of1947,which, among other things, established the Central Intelligence Agency,under the Director of Central Intelligence. Lobbying by the FBI, combinedwith fears of creating a U.S.Gestapo,71 led to the FBI’s being assigned respon-sibility for internal security functions and counterespionage. The CIA wasspecifically accorded “no police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers orinternal security functions.”72 This structure built in tensions between the CIAand the Defense Department’s intelligence agencies, and between the CIA andthe FBI.

Clandestine and Covert Action. With this history, the CIA brought to theera of 9/11 many attributes of an elite organization, viewing itself as serving onthe nation’s front lines to engage America’s enemies. Officers in its ClandestineService,under what became the Directorate of Operations, fanned out into sta-tions abroad. Each chief of station was a very important person in the organi-zation, given the additional title of the DCI’s representative in that country. He(occasionally she) was governed by an operating directive that listed operationalpriorities issued by the relevant regional division of the Directorate, constrainedby centrally determined allocations of resources.

Because the conduct of espionage was a high-risk activity, decisions on theclandestine targeting, recruitment, handling, and termination of secret sourcesand the dissemination of collected information required Washington’s approvaland action.But in this decentralized system,analogous in some ways to the cul-ture of the FBI field offices in the United States, everyone in the Directorateof Operations presumed that it was the job of headquarters to support the field,rather than manage field activities.

In the 1960s, the CIA suffered exposure of its botched effort to land Cubanexiles at the Bay of Pigs.The Vietnam War brought on more criticism.A promi-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 89

nent feature of the Watergate era was investigations of the CIA by committeesheaded by Frank Church in the Senate and Otis Pike in the House.They pub-lished evidence that the CIA had secretly planned to assassinate Fidel Castroand other foreign leaders.The President had not taken plain responsibility forthese judgments. CIA officials had taken most of the blame, saying they haddone so in order to preserve the President’s “plausible deniability.”73

After the Watergate era, Congress established oversight committees toensure that the CIA did not undertake covert action contrary to basic Amer-ican law. Case officers in the CIA’s Clandestine Service interpreted legislation,such as the Hughes-Ryan Amendment requiring that the president approve andreport to Congress any covert action, as sending a message to them that covertaction often leads to trouble and can severely damage one’s career. Controver-sies surrounding Central American covert action programs in the mid-1980sled to the indictment of several senior officers of the Clandestine Service.Dur-ing the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort against al Qaeda,between policymakers who wanted the CIA to undertake more aggressivecovert action and wary CIA leaders who counseled prudence and making surethat the legal basis and presidential authorization for their actions were unde-niably clear.

The Clandestine Service felt the impact of the post–Cold War peace divi-dend, with cuts beginning in 1992. As the number of officers declined andoverseas facilities were closed, the DCI and his managers responded to devel-oping crises in the Balkans or in Africa by “surging,” or taking officers fromacross the service to use on the immediate problem. In many cases the surgeofficers had little familiarity with the new issues. Inevitably, some parts of theworld and some collection targets were not fully covered, or not covered at all.This strategy also placed great emphasis on close relations with foreign liaisonservices, whose help was needed to gain information that the United Statesitself did not have the capacity to collect.

The nadir for the Clandestine Service was in 1995, when only 25 traineesbecame new officers.74 In 1998, the DCI was able to persuade the administra-tion and the Congress to endorse a long-range rebuilding program. It takes fiveto seven years of training, language study, and experience to bring a recruit upto full performance.75

Analysis. The CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence retained some of its originalcharacter of a university gone to war. Its men and women tended to judge oneanother by the quantity and quality of their publications (in this case, classifiedpublications).Apart from their own peers, they looked for approval and guid-ance to policymakers. During the 1990s and today, particular value is attachedto having a contribution included in one of the classified daily “newspapers”—the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief—or, better still, selected for inclusionin the President’s Daily Brief.76


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 90

The CIA had been created to wage the Cold War. Its steady focus on oneor two primary adversaries, decade after decade,had at least one positive effect:it created an environment in which managers and analysts could safely investtime and resources in basic research, detailed and reflective. Payoffs might notbe immediate. But when they wrote their estimates, even in brief papers, theycould draw on a deep base of knowledge.

When the Cold War ended, those investments could not easily be reallo-cated to new enemies.The cultural effects ran even deeper. In a more fluidinternational environment with uncertain, changing goals and interests, intel-ligence managers no longer felt they could afford such a patient, strategicapproach to long-term accumulation of intellectual capital. A university cul-ture with its versions of books and articles was giving way to the culture of thenewsroom.

During the 1990s, the rise of round-the-clock news shows and the Internetreinforced pressure on analysts to pass along fresh reports to policymakers at anever-faster pace, trying to add context or supplement what their customers werereceiving from the media.Weaknesses in all-source and strategic analysis werehighlighted by a panel, chaired by Admiral David Jeremiah, that critiqued theintelligence community’s failure to foresee the nuclear weapons tests by Indiaand Pakistan in 1998, as well as by a 1999 panel, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld,that discussed the community’s limited ability to assess the ballistic missile threatto the United States. Both reports called attention to the dispersal of effort ontoo many priorities, the declining attention to the craft of strategic analysis, andsecurity rules that prevented adequate sharing of information.Another Cold Warcraft had been an elaborate set of methods for warning against surprise attack,but that too had faded in analyzing new dangers like terrorism.77

Security. Another set of experiences that would affect the capacity of the CIAto cope with the new terrorism traced back to the early Cold War, when theAgency developed a concern, bordering on paranoia, about penetration by theSoviet KGB.James Jesus Angleton,who headed counterintelligence in the CIAuntil the early 1970s,became obsessed with the belief that the Agency harboredone or more Soviet “moles.”Although the pendulum swung back after Angle-ton’s forced retirement, it did not go very far. Instances of actual Soviet pene-tration kept apprehensions high.78 Then, in the early 1990s, came the AldrichAmes espionage case,which intensely embarrassed the CIA.Though obviouslyunreliable,Ames had been protected and promoted by fellow officers while hepaid his bills by selling to the Soviet Union the names of U.S. operatives andagents, a number of whom died as a result.

The concern about security vastly complicated information sharing. Infor-mation was compartmented in order to protect it against exposure to skilled andtechnologically sophisticated adversaries. There were therefore numerousrestrictions on handling information and a deep suspicion about sending infor-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 91

mation over newfangled electronic systems, like email, to other agencies of theU.S. government.79

Security concerns also increased the difficulty of recruiting officers quali-fied for counterterrorism.Very few American colleges or universities offeredprograms in Middle Eastern languages or Islamic studies.The total number ofundergraduate degrees granted in Arabic in all U.S. colleges and universities in2002 was six.80 Many who had traveled much outside the United States couldexpect a very long wait for initial clearance.Anyone who was foreign-born orhad numerous relatives abroad was well-advised not even to apply.With budg-ets for the CIA shrinking after the end of the Cold War, it was not surprisingthat, with some notable exceptions, new hires in the Clandestine Servicetended to have qualifications similar to those of serving officers: that is, theywere suited for traditional agent recruitment or for exploiting liaison relation-ships with foreign services but were not equipped to seek or use assets insidethe terrorist network.

Early Counterterrorism EffortsIn the 1970s and 1980s, terrorism had been tied to regional conflicts, mainlyin the Middle East.The majority of terrorist groups either were sponsored bygovernments or, like the Palestine Liberation Organization,were militants try-ing to create governments.

In the mid-1980s, on the basis of a report from a task force headed by VicePresident George Bush and after terrorist attacks at airports in Rome andAthens, the DCI created a Counterterrorist Center to unify activities across theDirectorate of Operations and the Directorate of Intelligence.The Countert-errorist Center had representation from the FBI and other agencies. In the for-mal table of organization it reported to the DCI,but in fact most of the Center’schiefs belonged to the Clandestine Service and usually looked for guidance tothe head of the Directorate of Operations.81

The Center stimulated and coordinated collection of information by CIAstations,compiled the results, and passed selected reports to appropriate stations,the Directorate of Intelligence analysts, other parts of the intelligence commu-nity, or to policymakers.The Center protected its bureaucratic turf.The Direc-tor of Central Intelligence had once had a national intelligence officer forterrorism to coordinate analysis; that office was abolished in the late 1980s andits duties absorbed in part by the Counterterrorist Center. Though analystsassigned to the Center produced a large number of papers, the focus was sup-port to operations.A CIA inspector general’s report in 1994 criticized the Cen-ter’s capacity to provide warning of terrorist attacks.82

Subsequent chapters will raise the issue of whether, despite tremendous tal-ent, energy, and dedication, the intelligence community failed to do enough incoping with the challenge from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda.Confronted with suchquestions, managers in the intelligence community often responded that theyhad meager resources with which to work.83


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 92

Cuts in national security expenditures at the end of the Cold War led tobudget cuts in the national foreign intelligence program from fiscal years 1990to 1996 and essentially flat budgets from fiscal years 1996 to 2000 (except forthe so-called Gingrich supplemental to the FY1999 budget and two later,smaller supplementals).These cuts compounded the difficulties of the intelli-gence agencies. Policymakers were asking them to move into the digitizedfuture to fight against computer-to-computer communications and moderncommunication systems, while maintaining capability against older systems,such as high-frequency radios and ultra-high- and very-high-frequency (lineof sight) systems that work like old-style television antennas.Also, demand forimagery increased dramatically following the success of the 1991 Gulf War.Both these developments, in turn,placed a premium on planning the next gen-eration of satellite systems, the cost of which put great pressure on the rest ofthe intelligence budget. As a result, intelligence agencies experienced staffreductions, affecting both operators and analysts.84

Yet at least for the CIA, part of the burden in tackling terrorism arose fromthe background we have described: an organization capable of attractingextraordinarily motivated people but institutionally averse to risk, with itscapacity for covert action atrophied, predisposed to restrict the distribution ofinformation, having difficulty assimilating new types of personnel, and accus-tomed to presenting descriptive reportage of the latest intelligence.The CIA,to put it another way,needed significant change in order to get maximum effectin counterterrorism. President Clinton appointed George Tenet as DCI in1997, and by all accounts terrorism was a priority for him. But Tenet’s ownassessment, when questioned by the Commission, was that in 2004, the CIA’sclandestine service was still at least five years away from being fully ready toplay its counterterrorism role.85 And while Tenet was clearly the leader of theCIA, the intelligence community’s confederated structure left open the ques-tion of who really was in charge of the entire U.S. intelligence effort.

3.5 . . .AND IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND THEDEFENSE DEPARTMENT

The State DepartmentThe Commission asked Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in 2004why the State Department had so long pursued what seemed, and ultimatelyproved, to be a hopeless effort to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistanto deport Bin Ladin. Armitage replied: “We do what the State Departmentdoes, we don’t go out and fly bombers, we don’t do things like that[;] . . . wedo our part in these things.”86

Fifty years earlier, the person in Armitage’s position would not have spokenof the Department of State as having such a limited role. Until the late 1950s,the department dominated the processes of advising the president and Con-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 93

gress on U.S. relations with the rest of the world.The National Security Coun-cil was created in 1947 largely as a result of lobbying from the Pentagon for aforum where the military could object if they thought the State Departmentwas setting national objectives that the United States did not have the where-withal to pursue.

The State Department retained primacy until the 1960s, when theKennedy and Johnson administrations turned instead to Robert McNamara’sDefense Department, where a mini–state department was created to analyzeforeign policy issues. President Richard Nixon then concentrated policy plan-ning and policy coordination in a powerful National Security Council staff,overseen by Henry Kissinger.

In later years, individual secretaries of state were important figures, but thedepartment’s role continued to erode. State came into the 1990s overmatchedby the resources of other departments and with little support for its budgeteither in the Congress or in the president’s Office of Management and Bud-get.

Like the FBI and the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, the State Departmenthad a tradition of emphasizing service in the field over service in Washington.Even ambassadors, however, often found host governments not only makingconnections with the U.S. government through their own missions in Wash-ington,but working through the CIA station or a Defense attaché. Increasingly,the embassies themselves were overshadowed by powerful regional command-ers in chief reporting to the Pentagon.87

CounterterrorismIn the 1960s and 1970s, the State Department managed counterterrorism pol-icy. It was the official channel for communication with the governments pre-sumed to be behind the terrorists. Moreover, since terrorist incidents of thisperiod usually ended in negotiations, an ambassador or other embassy officialwas the logical person to represent U.S. interests.

Keeping U.S. diplomatic efforts against terrorism coherent was a recurringchallenge. In 1976, at the direction of Congress, the department elevated itscoordinator for combating terrorism to the rank equivalent to an assistant sec-retary of state.As an “ambassador at large,” this official sought to increase thevisibility of counterterrorism matters within the department and to help inte-grate U.S.policy implementation among government agencies.The prolongedcrisis of 1979–1981,when 53 Americans were held hostage at the U.S.embassyin Tehran, ended the State Department leadership in counterterrorism. Presi-dent Carter’s assertive national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, tookcharge, and the coordination function remained thereafter in the White House.

President Reagan’s second secretary of state,George Shultz,advocated activeU.S.efforts to combat terrorism,often recommending the use of military force.Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger opposed Shultz,who made little head-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 94

way against Weinberger, or even within his own department.Though Shultzelevated the status and visibility of counterterrorism coordination by appoint-ing as coordinator first L. Paul Bremer and then Robert Oakley, both seniorcareer ambassadors of high standing in the Foreign Service, the departmentcontinued to be dominated by regional bureaus for which terrorism was not afirst-order concern.

Secretaries of state after Shultz took less personal interest in the problem.Only congressional opposition prevented President Clinton’s first secretary ofstate, Warren Christopher, from merging terrorism into a new bureau thatwould have also dealt with narcotics and crime.The coordinator under Secre-tary Madeleine Albright told the Commission that his job was seen as a minorone within the department.88 Although the description of his status has beendisputed, and Secretary Albright strongly supported the August 1998 strikesagainst Bin Ladin, the role played by the Department of State in counterter-rorism was often cautionary before 9/11.This was a reflection of the realitythat counterterrorism priorities nested within broader foreign policy aims ofthe U.S. government.

State Department consular officers around the world, it should not be for-gotten, were constantly challenged by the problem of terrorism, for they han-dled visas for travel to the United States. After it was discovered that AbdelRahman, the Blind Sheikh, had come and gone almost at will, State initiatedsignificant reforms to its watchlist and visa-processing policies. In 1993, Con-gress passed legislation allowing State to retain visa-processing fees for bordersecurity; those fees were then used by the department to fully automate theterrorist watchlist. By the late 1990s, State had created a worldwide, real-timeelectronic database of visa, law enforcement,and watchlist information, the coreof the post-9/11 border screening systems. Still, as will be seen later, the sys-tem had many holes.89

The Department of DefenseThe Department of Defense is the behemoth among federal agencies.With anannual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire.The Defense Department is part civilian, part military.The civilian secretary ofdefense has ultimate control, under the president.Among the uniformed mil-itary, the top official is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is sup-ported by a Joint Staff divided into standard military staff compartments—J-2(intelligence), J-3 (operations), and so on.

Because of the necessary and demanding focus on the differing mission ofeach service, and their long and proud traditions, the Army, Navy, Air Force,and Marine Corps have often fought ferociously over roles and missions in warfighting and over budgets and posts of leadership.Two developments dimin-ished this competition.

The first was the passage by Congress in 1986 of the Goldwater-Nichols


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 95

Act, which, among other things, mandated that promotion to high rankrequired some period of duty with a different service or with a joint (i.e.,multiservice) command.This had strong and immediate effects, loosening theloyalties of senior officers to their separate services and causing them to thinkmore broadly about the military establishment as a whole.90 However, it alsomay have lessened the diversity of military advice and options presented to thepresident.The Goldwater-Nichols example is seen by some as having lessonsapplicable to lessening competition and increasing cooperation in other partsof the federal bureaucracy, particularly the law enforcement and intelligencecommunities.

The second, related development was a significant transfer of planning andcommand responsibilities from the service chiefs and their staffs to the jointand unified commands outside of Washington, especially those for StrategicForces and for four regions:Europe, the Pacific, the Center, and the South. Postsin these commands became prized assignments for ambitious officers, and thevoices of their five commanders in chief became as influential as those of theservice chiefs.

CounterterrorismThe Pentagon first became concerned about terrorism as a result of hostagetaking in the 1970s. In June 1976, Palestinian terrorists seized an Air Franceplane and landed it at Entebbe in Uganda, holding 105 Israelis and other Jewsas hostages.A special Israeli commando force stormed the plane, killed all theterrorists, and rescued all but one of the hostages. In October 1977,a West Ger-man special force dealt similarly with a Lufthansa plane sitting on a tarmac inMogadishu: every terrorist was killed, and every hostage brought back safely.The White House, members of Congress, and the news media asked the Pen-tagon whether the United States was prepared for similar action.The answerwas no. The Army immediately set about creating the Delta Force, one ofwhose missions was hostage rescue.

The first test for the new force did not go well. It came in April 1980 dur-ing the Iranian hostage crisis, when Navy helicopters with Marine pilots flewto a site known as Desert One, some 200 miles southeast of Tehran, to ren-dezvous with Air Force planes carrying Delta Force commandos and fresh fuel.Mild sandstorms disabled three of the helicopters, and the commander orderedthe mission aborted. But foul-ups on the ground resulted in the loss of eightaircraft, five airmen,and three marines.Remembered as “Desert One,”this fail-ure remained vivid for members of the armed forces. It also contributed to thelater Goldwater-Nichols reforms.

In 1983 came Hezbollah’s massacre of the Marines in Beirut.President Rea-gan quickly withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon—a reversal later routinelycited by jihadists as evidence of U.S. weakness. A detailed investigation pro-duced a list of new procedures that would become customary for forces


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 96

deployed abroad.They involved a number of defensive measures, including cau-tion not only about strange cars and trucks but also about unknown aircraftoverhead. “Force protection” became a significant claim on the time andresources of the Department of Defense.

A decade later, the military establishment had another experience thatevoked both Desert One and the withdrawal from Beirut.The first PresidentBush had authorized the use of U.S. military forces to ensure humanitarianrelief in war-torn Somalia.Tribal factions interfered with the supply missions.By the autumn of 1993, U.S. commanders concluded that the main source oftrouble was a warlord, Mohammed Farrah Aidid. An Army special forcelaunched a raid on Mogadishu to capture him. In the course of a long night,two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, 73 Americans were wounded,18 were killed, and the world’s television screens showed images of an Amer-ican corpse dragged through the streets by exultant Somalis. Under pressurefrom Congress, President Clinton soon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces.“Black Hawk down” joined “Desert One” as a symbol among Americans inuniform, code phrases used to evoke the risks of daring exploits without max-imum preparation, overwhelming force, and a well-defined mission.

In 1995–1996, the Defense Department began to invest effort in planninghow to handle the possibility of a domestic terrorist incident involvingweapons of mass destruction (WMD).The idea of a domestic command forhomeland defense began to be discussed in 1997, and in 1999 the Joint Chiefsdeveloped a concept for the establishment of a domestic Unified Command.Congress killed the idea. Instead, the Department established the Joint ForcesCommand, located at Norfolk, Virginia, making it responsible for militaryresponse to domestic emergencies, both natural and man-made.91

Pursuant to the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program,the Defense Department began in 1997 to train first responders in 120 of thenation’s largest cities.As a key part of its efforts,Defense created National GuardWMD Civil Support Teams to respond in the event of a WMD terrorist inci-dent.A total of 32 such National Guard teams were authorized by fiscal year2001. Under the command of state governors, they provided support to civil-ian agencies to assess the nature of the attack,offer medical and technical advice,and coordinate state and local responses.92

The Department of Defense, like the Department of State, had a coordina-tor who represented the department on the interagency committee concernedwith counterterrorism. By the end of President Clinton’s first term, this offi-cial had become the assistant secretary of defense for special operations andlow-intensity conflict.93

The experience of the 1980s had suggested to the military establishmentthat if it were to have a role in counterterrorism, it would be a traditional mil-itary role—to act against state sponsors of terrorism.And the military had whatseemed an excellent example of how to do it. In 1986, a bomb went off at a


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 97

disco in Berlin, killing two American soldiers. Intelligence clearly linked thebombing to Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qadhafi. President Reagan ordered airstrikes against Libya.The operation was not cost free: the United States lost twoplanes. Evidence accumulated later, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am103, clearly showed that the operation did not curb Qadhafi’s interest in ter-rorism.However, it was seen at the time as a success.The lesson then taken fromLibya was that terrorism could be stopped by the use of U.S. air power thatinflicted pain on the authors or sponsors of terrorist acts.

This lesson was applied, using Tomahawk missiles, early in the Clintonadministration. George H.W. Bush was scheduled to visit Kuwait to be hon-ored for his rescue of that country in the Gulf War of 1991. Kuwaiti securityservices warned Washington that Iraqi agents were planning to assassinate theformer president. President Clinton not only ordered precautions to protectBush but asked about options for a reprisal against Iraq.The Pentagon proposed12 targets for Tomahawk missiles. Debate in the White House and at the CIAabout possible collateral damage pared the list down to three, then to one—Iraqi intelligence headquarters in central Baghdad. The attack was made atnight, to minimize civilian casualties.Twenty-three missiles were fired. Otherthan one civilian casualty, the operation seemed completely successful: theintelligence headquarters was demolished. No further intelligence came inabout terrorist acts planned by Iraq.94

The 1986 attack in Libya and the 1993 attack on Iraq symbolized for themilitary establishment effective use of military power for counterterrorism—limited retaliation with air power, aimed at deterrence.What remained was thehard question of how deterrence could be effective when the adversary was aloose transnational network.

3.6 . . .AND IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Because coping with terrorism was not (and is not) the sole province of anycomponent of the U.S. government, some coordinating mechanism is neces-sary.When terrorism was not a prominent issue, the State Department couldperform this role.When the Iranian hostage crisis developed, this procedurewent by the board:National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski took chargeof crisis management.

The Reagan administration continued and formalized the practice of hav-ing presidential staff coordinate counterterrorism. After the killing of themarines in Beirut, President Reagan signed National Security Directive 138,calling for a “shift . . . from passive to active defense measures” and reprogram-ming or adding new resources to effect the shift. It directed the State Depart-ment “to intensify efforts to achieve cooperation of other governments” andthe CIA to “intensify use of liaison and other intelligence capabilities and also


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 98

to develop plans and capability to preempt groups and individuals planningstrikes against U.S. interests.”95

Speaking to the American Bar Association in July 1985, the President char-acterized terrorism as “an act of war” and declared:“There can be no place onearth left where it is safe for these monsters to rest, to train, or practice theircruel and deadly skills. We must act together, or unilaterally, if necessary toensure that terrorists have no sanctuary—anywhere.”96 The air strikes againstLibya were one manifestation of this strategy.

Through most of President Reagan’s second term, the coordination ofcounterterrorism was overseen by a high-level interagency committee chairedby the deputy national security adviser. But the Reagan administration closedwith a major scandal that cast a cloud over the notion that the White Houseshould guide counterterrorism.

President Reagan was concerned because Hezbollah was taking Americanshostage and periodically killing them. He was also constrained by a bill hesigned into law that made it illegal to ship military aid to anticommunist Con-tra guerrillas in Nicaragua, whom he strongly supported. His national securityadviser, Robert McFarlane, and McFarlane’s deputy,Admiral John Poindexter,thought the hostage problem might be solved and the U.S.position in the Mid-dle East improved if the United States quietly negotiated with Iran aboutexchanging hostages for modest quantities of arms. Shultz and Weinberger,united for once, opposed McFarlane and Poindexter.

A staffer for McFarlane and Poindexter, Marine Lieutenant Colonel OliverNorth, developed a scheme to trade U.S. arms for hostages and divert the pro-ceeds to the Contras to get around U.S. law. He may have had encouragementfrom Director of Central Intelligence William Casey.97

When the facts were revealed in 1986 and 1987, it appeared to be the 1970sall over again: a massive abuse of covert action. Now, instead of stories aboutpoisoned cigars and Mafia hit men,Americans heard testimony about a secretvisit to Tehran by McFarlane, using an assumed name and bearing a chocolatecake decorated with icing depicting a key.An investigation by a special coun-sel resulted in the indictment of McFarlane, Poindexter, North, and ten oth-ers, including several high-ranking officers from the CIA’s ClandestineService.The investigations spotlighted the importance of accountability andofficial responsibility for faithful execution of laws. For the story of 9/11, thesignificance of the Iran-Contra affair was that it made parts of the bureaucracyreflexively skeptical about any operating directive from the White House.98

As the national security advisor’s function expanded, the procedures andstructure of the advisor’s staff, conventionally called the National SecurityCouncil staff, became more formal.The advisor developed recommendationsfor presidential directives, differently labeled by each president. For PresidentClinton, they were to be Presidential Decision Directives; for President GeorgeW.Bush,National Security Policy Directives.These documents and many oth-


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 99

ers requiring approval by the president worked their way through interagencycommittees usually composed of departmental representatives at the assistantsecretary level or just below it.The NSC staff had senior directors who wouldsit on these interagency committees, often as chair, to facilitate agreement andto represent the wider interests of the national security advisor.

When President Clinton took office, he decided right away to coordinatecounterterrorism from the White House. On January 25, 1993, Mir AmalKansi, an Islamic extremist from Pakistan, shot and killed two CIA employeesat the main highway entrance to CIA headquarters in Virginia. (Kansi droveaway and was captured abroad much later.) Only a month afterward came theWorld Trade Center bombing and, a few weeks after that, the Iraqi plot againstformer President Bush.

President Clinton’s first national security advisor, Anthony Lake, hadretained from the Bush administration the staffer who dealt with crime, nar-cotics, and terrorism (a portfolio often known as “drugs and thugs”), the vet-eran civil servant Richard Clarke.President Clinton and Lake turned to Clarketo do the staff work for them in coordinating counterterrorism. Before long,he would chair a midlevel interagency committee eventually titled the Coun-terterrorism Security Group (CSG).We will later tell of Clarke’s evolution asadviser on and, in time, manager of the U.S. counterterrorist effort.

When explaining the missile strike against Iraq provoked by the plot to killPresident Bush, President Clinton stated:“From the first days of our Revolu-tion,America’s security has depended on the clarity of the message:Don’t treadon us.A firm and commensurate response was essential to protect our sover-eignty, to send a message to those who engage in state-sponsored terrorism, todeter further violence against our people, and to affirm the expectation of civ-ilized behavior among nations.”99

In his State of the Union message in January 1995,President Clinton prom-ised “comprehensive legislation to strengthen our hand in combating terror-ists, whether they strike at home or abroad.” In February, he sent Congressproposals to extend federal criminal jurisdiction, to make it easier to deportterrorists, and to act against terrorist fund-raising. In early May, he submitted abundle of strong amendments.The interval had seen the news from Tokyo inMarch that a doomsday cult,Aum Shinrikyo, had released sarin nerve gas in asubway,killing 12 and injuring thousands.The sect had extensive properties andlaboratories in Japan and offices worldwide, including one in New York. Nei-ther the FBI nor the CIA had ever heard of it. In April had come the bomb-ing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City; immediate suspicionsthat it had been the work of Islamists turned out to be wrong, and the bombersproved to be American antigovernment extremists named Timothy McVeighand Terry Nichols. President Clinton proposed to amend his earlier proposalsby increasing wiretap and electronic surveillance authority for the FBI, requir-ing that explosives carry traceable taggants, and providing substantial newmoney not only for the FBI and CIA but also for local police.100


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 100

President Clinton issued a classified directive in June 1995, PresidentialDecision Directive 39, which said that the United States should “deter, defeatand respond vigorously to all terrorist attacks on our territory and against ourcitizens.”The directive called terrorism both a matter of national security anda crime,and it assigned responsibilities to various agencies.Alarmed by the inci-dent in Tokyo, President Clinton made it the very highest priority for his ownstaff and for all agencies to prepare to detect and respond to terrorism thatinvolved chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.101

During 1995 and 1996, President Clinton devoted considerable time toseeking cooperation from other nations in denying sanctuary to terrorists. Heproposed significantly larger budgets for the FBI, with much of the increasedesignated for counterterrorism. For the CIA, he essentially stopped cuttingallocations and supported requests for supplemental funds for counterterror-ism.102

When announcing his new national security team after being reelected in1996,President Clinton mentioned terrorism first in a list of several challengesfacing the country.103 In 1998, after Bin Ladin’s fatwa and other alarms, Pres-ident Clinton accepted a proposal from his national security advisor, Samuel“Sandy” Berger, and gave Clarke a new position as national coordinator forsecurity, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism. He issued two Presi-dential Decision Directives, numbers 62 and 63, that built on the assignmentsto agencies that had been made in Presidential Decision Directive 39; laid outten program areas for counterterrorism; and enhanced, at least on paper,Clarke’s authority to police these assignments. Because of concerns especiallyon the part of Attorney General Reno, this new authority was defined in pre-cise and limiting language.Clarke was only to “provide advice”regarding budg-ets and to “coordinate the development of interagency agreed guidelines” foraction.104

Clarke also was awarded a seat on the cabinet-level Principals Committeewhen it met on his issues—a highly unusual step for a White House staffer.Hisinteragency body, the CSG,ordinarily reported to the Deputies Committee ofsubcabinet officials, unless Berger asked them to report directly to the princi-pals. The complementary directive, number 63, defined the elements of thenation’s critical infrastructure and considered ways to protect it. Takentogether, the two directives basically left the Justice Department and the FBIin charge at home and left terrorism abroad to the CIA, the State Department,and other agencies, under Clarke’s and Berger’s coordinating hands.

Explaining the new arrangement and his concerns in another commence-ment speech, this time at the Naval Academy, in May 1998, the President said:

First,we will use our new integrated approach to intensify the fight againstall forms of terrorism: to capture terrorists, no matter where they hide; towork with other nations to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries overseas; torespond rapidly and effectively to protect Americans from terrorism at


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 101

home and abroad.Second,we will launch a comprehensive plan to detect,deter, and defend against attacks on our critical infrastructures, our powersystems, water supplies, police, fire, and medical services, air traffic con-trol, financial services, telephone systems, and computer networks. . . .Third,we will undertake a concerted effort to prevent the spread and useof biological weapons and to protect our people in the event these terri-ble weapons are ever unleashed by a rogue state, a terrorist group, or aninternational criminal organization. . . . Finally, we must do more to pro-tect our civilian population from biological weapons.105

Clearly, the President’s concern about terrorism had steadily risen.Thatheightened worry would become even more obvious early in 1999, whenhe addressed the National Academy of Sciences and presented his mostsomber account yet of what could happen if the United States were hit,unprepared, by terrorists wielding either weapons of mass destruction orpotent cyberweapons.

3.7 . . .AND IN THE CONGRESS

Since the beginning of the Republic, few debates have been as hotly contestedas the one over executive versus legislative powers.At the Constitutional Con-vention, the founders sought to create a strong executive but check its powers.They left those powers sufficiently ambiguous so that room was left for Con-gress and the president to struggle over the direction of the nation’s securityand foreign policies.

The most serious question has centered on whether or not the presidentneeds congressional authorization to wage war. The current status of thatdebate seems to have settled into a recognition that a president can deploy mil-itary forces for small and limited operations, but needs at least congressionalsupport if not explicit authorization for large and more open-ended militaryoperations.

This calculus becomes important in this story as both President Clinton andPresident Bush chose not to seek a declaration of war on Bin Ladin after hehad declared and begun to wage war on us, a declaration that they did notacknowledge publicly. Not until after 9/11 was a congressional authorizationsought.

The most substantial change in national security oversight in Congress tookplace following World War II.The Congressional Reorganization Act of 1946created the modern Armed Services committees that have become so power-ful today. One especially noteworthy innovation was the creation of the JointHouse-Senate Atomic Energy Committee,which is credited by many with thedevelopment of our nuclear deterrent capability and was also criticized forwielding too much power relative to the executive branch.


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 102

Ironically, this committee was eliminated in the 1970s as Congress wasundertaking the next most important reform of oversight in response to theChurch and Pike investigations into abuses of power. In 1977, the House andSenate created select committees to exercise oversight of the executivebranch’s conduct of intelligence operations.

The Intelligence CommitteesThe House and Senate select committees on intelligence share some impor-tant characteristics.They have limited authorities.They do not have exclusiveauthority over intelligence agencies.Appropriations are ultimately determinedby the Appropriations committees.The Armed Services committees exercisejurisdiction over the intelligence agencies within the Department of Defense(and, in the case of the Senate,over the Central Intelligence Agency).One con-sequence is that the rise and fall of intelligence budgets are tied directly totrends in defense spending.

The president is required by law to ensure the congressional Intelligencecommittees are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activitiesof the United States.The committees allow the CIA to some extent to with-hold information in order to protect sources,methods,and operations.The CIAmust bring presidentially authorized covert action Findings and Memorandaof Notification to the Intelligence committees, and it must detail its failures.The committees conduct their most important work in closed hearings orbriefings in which security over classified material can be maintained.

Members of the Intelligence committees serve for a limited time, a restric-tion imposed by each chamber. Many members believe these limits preventcommittee members from developing the necessary expertise to conduct effec-tive oversight.

Secrecy, while necessary, can also harm oversight.The overall budget of theintelligence community is classified, as are most of its activities.Thus, the Intel-ligence committees cannot take advantage of democracy’s best oversightmechanism: public disclosure. This makes them significantly different fromother congressional oversight committees, which are often spurred into actionby the work of investigative journalists and watchdog organizations.

Adjusting to the Post–Cold War EraThe unexpected and rapid end of the Cold War in 1991 created trauma in theforeign policy and national security community both in and out of govern-ment.While some criticized the intelligence community for failing to forecastthe collapse of the Soviet Union (and used this argument to propose drasticcuts in intelligence agencies), most recognized that the good news of beingrelieved of the substantial burden of maintaining a security structure to meetthe Soviet challenge was accompanied by the bad news of increased insecurity.In many directions, the community faced threats and intelligence challengesthat it was largely unprepared to meet.


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 103

So did the intelligence oversight committees. New digitized technologies,and the demand for imagery and continued capability against older systems,meant the need to spend more on satellite systems at the expense of humanefforts. In addition, denial and deception became more effective as targetslearned from public sources what our intelligence agencies were doing.Therewere comprehensive reform proposals of the intelligence community, such asthose offered by Senators Boren and McCurdy. That said, Congress still tooktoo little action to address institutional weaknesses.106

With the Cold War over,and the intelligence community roiled by the Amesspy scandal, a presidential commission chaired first by former secretary ofdefense Les Aspin and later by former secretary of defense Harold Brown exam-ined the intelligence community’s future. After it issued recommendationsaddressing the DCI’s lack of personnel and budget authority over the intelli-gence community, the Intelligence committees in 1996 introduced implement-ing legislation to remedy these problems.

The Department of Defense and its congressional authorizing committeesrose in opposition to the proposed changes.The President and DCI did notactively support these changes.Relatively small changes made in 1996 gave theDCI consultative authority and created a new deputy for management andassistant DCIs for collection and analysis.These reforms occurred only after theSenate Select Committee on Intelligence took the unprecedented step ofthreatening to bring down the defense authorization bill. Indeed, rather thanincreasing the DCI’s authorities over national intelligence, the 1990s witnessedmovement in the opposite direction through, for example, the transfer of theCIA’s imaging analysis capability to the new imagery and mapping agency cre-ated within the Department of Defense.

Congress AdjustsCongress as a whole, like the executive branch, adjusted slowly to the rise oftransnational terrorism as a threat to national security. In particular, the grow-ing threat and capabilities of Bin Ladin were not understood in Congress.As themost representative branch of the federal government, Congress closely trackstrends in what public opinion and the electorate identify as key issues. In theyears before September 11, terrorism seldom registered as important.To theextent that terrorism did break through and engage the attention of the Con-gress as a whole, it would briefly command attention after a specific incident,and then return to a lower rung on the public policy agenda.

Several points about Congress are worth noting. First, Congress always hasa strong orientation toward domestic affairs. It usually takes on foreign policyand national security issues after threats are identified and articulated by theadministration. In the absence of such a detailed—and repeated—articulation,national security tends not to rise very high on the list of congressional prior-ities.Presidents are selective in their use of political capital for international issues.


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 104

In the decade before 9/11, presidential discussion of and congressional andpublic attention to foreign affairs and national security were dominated byother issues—among them, Haiti, Bosnia, Russia, China, Somalia, Kosovo,NATO enlargement, the Middle East peace process, missile defense, and glob-alization.Terrorism infrequently took center stage; and when it did, the con-text was often terrorists’ tactics—a chemical, biological, nuclear, or computerthreat—not terrorist organizations.107

Second,Congress tends to follow the overall lead of the president on budgetissues with respect to national security matters.There are often sharp argumentsabout individual programs and internal priorities, but by and large the overallfunding authorized and appropriated by the Congress comes out close to thepresident’s request.This tendency was certainly illustrated by the downwardtrends in spending on defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs in the first partof the 1990s.The White House, to be sure, read the political signals comingfrom Capitol Hill, but the Congress largely acceded to the executive branch’sfunding requests. In the second half of the decade,Congress appropriated some98 percent of what the administration requested for intelligence programs.Apartfrom the Gingrich supplemental of $1.5 billion for overall intelligence pro-grams in fiscal year 1999, the key decisions on overall allocation of resourcesfor national security issues in the decade before 9/11—including counterter-rorism funding—were made in the president’s Office of Management and Bud-get.108

Third, Congress did not reorganize itself after the end of the Cold War toaddress new threats. Recommendations by the Joint Committee on the Orga-nization of Congress were implemented, in part, in the House of Representa-tives after the 1994 elections, but there was no reorganization of nationalsecurity functions.The Senate undertook no appreciable changes.Traditionalissues—foreign policy, defense, intelligence—continued to be handled bycommittees whose structure remained largely unaltered, while issues such astransnational terrorism fell between the cracks.Terrorism came under the juris-diction of at least 14 different committees in the House alone, and budget andoversight functions in the House and Senate concerning terrorism were alsosplintered badly among committees.Little effort was made to consider an inte-grated policy toward terrorism, which might range from identifying the threatto addressing vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure; and the piecemealapproach in the Congress contributed to the problems of the executive branchin formulating such a policy.109

Fourth, the oversight function of Congress has diminished over time. Inrecent years, traditional review of the administration of programs and theimplementation of laws has been replaced by “a focus on personal investiga-tions, possible scandals, and issues designed to generate media attention.”Theunglamorous but essential work of oversight has been neglected,and few mem-bers past or present believe it is performed well. DCI Tenet told us: “We ran


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 105

from threat to threat to threat. . . . [T]here was not a system in place to say,‘Yougot to go back and do this and this and this.’” Not just the DCI but the entireexecutive branch needed help from Congress in addressing the questions ofcounterterrorism strategy and policy, looking past day-to-day concerns.Mem-bers of Congress, however, also found their time spent on such everyday mat-ters, or in looking back to investigate mistakes, and often missed the bigquestions—as did the executive branch. Staff tended as well to focus onparochial considerations, seeking to add or cut funding for individual (oftensmall) programs, instead of emphasizing comprehensive oversight projects.110

Fifth, on certain issues, other priorities pointed Congress in a direction thatwas unhelpful in meeting the threats that were emerging in the months lead-ing up to 9/11. Committees with oversight responsibility for aviation focusedoverwhelmingly on airport congestion and the economic health of the airlines,not aviation security. Committees with responsibility for the INS focused onthe Southwest border,not on terrorists. Justice Department officials told us thatcommittees with responsibility for the FBI tightly restricted appropriations forimprovements in information technology, in part because of concerns aboutthe FBI’s ability to manage such projects. Committees responsible for SouthAsia spent the decade of the 1990s imposing sanctions on Pakistan, leaving pres-idents with little leverage to alter Pakistan’s policies before 9/11. Committeeswith responsibility for the Defense Department paid little heed to developingmilitary responses to terrorism and stymied intelligence reform.All commit-tees found themselves swamped in the minutiae of the budget process,with lit-tle time for consideration of longer-term questions, or what many memberspast and present told us was the proper conduct of oversight.111

Each of these trends contributed to what can only be described as Con-gress’s slowness and inadequacy in treating the issue of terrorism in the yearsbefore 9/11.The legislative branch adjusted little and did not restructure itselfto address changing threats.112 Its attention to terrorism was episodic and splin-tered across several committees. Congress gave little guidance to executivebranch agencies, did not reform them in any significant way, and did not sys-tematically perform oversight to identify, address, and attempt to resolve themany problems in national security and domestic agencies that became appar-ent in the aftermath of 9/11.

Although individual representatives and senators took significant steps, theoverall level of attention in the Congress to the terrorist threat was low.Weexamined the number of hearings on terrorism from January 1998 to Septem-ber 2001.The Senate Armed Services Committee held nine—four related tothe attack on the USS Cole. The House Armed Services Committee also heldnine, six of them by a special oversight panel on terrorism.The Senate ForeignRelations Committee and its House counterpart both held four.The SenateSelect Committee on Intelligence, in addition to its annual worldwide threathearing, held eight; its House counterpart held perhaps two exclusively


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 106

devoted to counterterrorism, plus the briefings by its terrorist working group.The Senate and House intelligence panels did not raise public and congressionalattention on Bin Ladin and al Qaeda prior to the joint inquiry into the attacksof September 11, perhaps in part because of the classified nature of their work.Yet in the context of committees that each hold scores of hearings every yearon issues in their jurisdiction, this list is not impressive.Terrorism was a sec-ond- or third-order priority within the committees of Congress responsiblefor national security.113

In fact, Congress had a distinct tendency to push questions of emergingnational security threats off its own plate, leaving them for others to consider.Congress asked outside commissions to do the work that arguably was at theheart of its own oversight responsibilities.114 Beginning in 1999, the reports ofthese commissions made scores of recommendations to address terrorism andhomeland security but drew little attention from Congress. Most of theirimpact came after 9/11.


Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 107

Documents

3 COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES 71 In chapter 2,we described the growth of a new kind of terrorism,and a new terrorist organization—especially from 1988 to 1998,